This Week in Internet Marketing 2011 11 07

Another week, another slew of internet marketing headlines: 7 easy wins for your PPC campaign; new ad placements for Google AdWords; Twitter shown to increase purchase intent; the continued rise of smartphones; and testing new layouts for Google Places.

This Week in Internet Marketing 2011 11 07

This article covers everything from how to optimize forms, to using the right images on your PPC landing page. The article also stresses the importance of A/B testing like elements like buttons, ad copy. It’s one thing to create compelling ads and targeted keywords, but once people click on your ad, make sure your landing page is optimized for conversion.

As part of Google’s never ending quest to keep us on our toes, the PPC giant will begin to display paid search results on the bottom of the SERP (search engine results page). According to Google the new placement performed better in testing. Updates to Google Analytics will also allow you to compare the CTR (click through rates) of the new placement vs. the top 3, more coveted positions.

This slideshare summarizes a study done by CMB a firm who studies online social behaviour. They found that people on Twitter are online more frequently and typically follow fewer than 10 brands. One third of users are interacting with brands more than they did a year ago. This is in large part to more brands joining Twitter and to existing brands dedicating more people to manage their online voice.

Sure it’s a bit of an odd figure, but it speaks to the reluctance of the over 50 crowd to adopt smartphones, possibly because they need reading glasses to see the tiny screens? Nonetheless younger generations are taking to their Androids, iPhones and BlackBerrys in record numbers. We’ve already seen mobile search surpass desktop search on weekends, it may only be a matter of time until mobile becomes the primary method by which younger generations access the internet.

This brief article by Search Engine Land contains a video and some very interesting screenshots of how Google Places is being displayed to some users. Google does this periodically as was noted earlier with ad placements whereby they test new layouts and functionality with a small subset of users. They then analyze their behaviour and iterate the product based on how it was used.